Tina Cannon, a top deputy to State Auditor John Dougall, won the Republican Party’s nomination to replace her boss, prevailing over Weber County Clerk Ricky Hatch Tuesday night.
At about 10 p.m. Tuesday, Cannon held a 14-point lead with 57% of the vote to 43% for Hatch.
The victory means Cannon will advance to the November general election where she will face Catherine Voutaz, the Democratic nominee, and Jeffrey Ostler, the Constitution Party nominee.
The winner in November will replace Dougall, who opted to run for Congress in the 3rd District — vacated by Rep. John Curtis who is running to replace Sen. Mitt Romney — rather than seek reelection as the state’s fiscal watchdog, a position he has held since 2013.
The office audits financial reports from state and local governments, measures performance and reviews policies and various departments’ compliance with laws and regulations.
Cannon campaigned on improving the office’s transparency, working with the Legislature to create better performance measures and recruiting and retaining qualified staff. Hatch, meanwhile, focused on staffing, building a better relationship with local governments and making audits easier to understand and implement.
During the 2024 legislative session, Utah lawmakers passed a pair law requiring the state auditor’s office to set up a process to receive reports that the state’s new anti-diversity and transgender bathroom rules have been broken.
Dougall has referred to rules like the anti-DEI effort “become tools of virtue signaling” and decried the Legislature’s transgender bathroom bill, which he said makes him the “bathroom monitor.”
